Dreams Come True -- Kessen wa Kin'youbi (決戦は金曜日）

It was the best of times for Dreams Come True in the early 90s. They were making hits like Ichiro Suzuki. And for a successful band that also comes across as fun-loving, it was only a matter of time when TV would come knocking. And so Miwa, Masato and Takahiro got their own late night variety show on Fridays titled "Ureshi, Tanoshi, Dai Suki" (うれしたのし大好き...Happy, Fun, I Love It) for an entire year as they had guests, did skits and performed their songs.

The theme song was appropriately called "Kessen wa Kin'youbi"(The Deciding Battle is Friday), a fun funk-pop-disco tune that heralded the start of the weekend (although the kids probably still had to go to school on Saturdays at the time). It was written by vocalist Miwa Yoshida（吉田美和） and composed by leader/bassist Masato Nakamura（中村正人）. According to J-Wiki, the song is based liberally on Cheryl Lynn's classic 1978 disco hit, "Got To Be Real". You can take a listen to that as well below.

"Kessen wa Kin'youbi", DCT's 11th single, hit the top spot on the Oricon weeklies and became the 18th-ranked single for 1992 after its release in September. It was also included as a track on the band's 5th album, "The Swinging Star" released in November 1992. That album also hit No. 1 and not only did it become the 5th-ranked album of the year after only a month and a half of release, it went one rank better for the following year.

This is just an example of their variety show above. I was between gigs in Japan during that year; it would've been interesting watching the program, but I guess the Japanese video and food shops just didn't cotton onto Dreams Come True.

Dreams Come True--The Swinging Star

Thanks also to musictvprogram.com for the rankings information for this song and album.